Jessica, my best friend...My thoughts spiraled darker, and I glared at the other side of the carriage, hating myself. Killing most of Jialji’s group and pinning the woman to the ground with a spear hadn’t turned out as I’d expected. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Then when I’d gotten back to the settlement, most of the fighting had already been finished. I’d helped where I could, but I’d been too late to save everyone on my team.
And now there wasn’t anything left to do other than wait to face the endrot. When I eventually got back to base and gave my mission report in person, there was no way the chain of command would let me continue serving as I had. I was also planning not to defend myself in the military court martial I expected.
My career and probably my life were done. I’d been responsible for my team, but now Gina Chen was dead in a box. Others on the team had taken life-changing injuries.
I didn’t even look up when the door opened. Benjamin had probably come to relieve me of the vigil for Lieutenant Chen. My team and I had all agreed to honor the fallen in this way. I kept staring at the wooden floor even after the door closed. Maybe Benjamin had left, or it hadn’t been important. Strangely, the dim carriage still seemed brighter now.
Then I saw shoes in front of me, like someone had sat down across from me. There was no chair there, though. I lifted my eyes, blinked, then let my head fall back as I looked at the ceiling. Figures, I thought. “Hello, Enheduanna.”
“Call me Duanna, Nora. We are old friends. To be precise, you are a test subject, but I do love familiarity.” She tittered and I let my head fall back down to give her a flat look. A plank of wood being used for a seat hovered by itself. She typed on a glowing workstation, suspended in the air in front of her.
The High Priestess wore a pair of cream-colored pumps that matched her elegant dress, all contrasting with her dark skin. The dress was completely inappropriate for the fall weather. Other than her signature golden necklace, a bracelet was the only other jewelry she wore.
It had been years since I’d seen the ancient woman. Then again, I’d fought Jialji and her family a couple days ago, and meeting Duanna again might be destined in a way. After all, I first encountered the High Priestess a little over three years ago right after I’d been speared through the gut, left on a nameless road to die.
Enheduanna was a demigoddess, one of the most powerful beings on Ludus. All the old stories agreed that she had the raw power to destroy an entire nation if she chose. Showing disrespect to any High Priestess could mean instant death. But I was just Nora Hazard, a single, childless, jobless, plain, ex-street girl who had ignored her duty and left her friends to get hurt. I muttered, “What do you want, Duanna?”
The High Priestess typed for a while, her demeanor more focused and serious than I remembered. She seemed to talk to herself. “So many things require my attention. Fluctuations in the ether and the ethereal bands. Now Dolos gives me special projects. Ugh! I have my work! What is there to do? How can I find time for all my beautiful hobbies?” Then she met my eyes. “Are you feeling sorry for yourself, little Nora?”
“Little?” I looked down at myself.
“Choosing you to bear a Duanna orb was a great decision, but you are still young and inexperienced. Over the last three years, you have grown and changed, but you have many weaknesses. You are impulsive, mopey, violent, and emotionally damaged. I have noticed you steal multiple times, sometimes for things you definitely don’t need. You like to sleep too much, and are also sarcastic with people you care about. But you are also hard working, brave, loyal, caring, and oddly honorable most of the time. It has been interesting to study you, but my time of watching over you is finished.”
“I’m no thief,” I said reflexively. But what Enheduanna was saying, the final tone of the conversation, made me pause. Her unusual focus was disturbing. The rest of what she’d said really registered on me. “Huh?”
“The time you agreed to serve me has passed. I am sure you know this. The last task I gave you was over a year ago.”
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “I just thought you were going to leave me alone from now on and I would just stay in the military.”
Duanna pursed her lips. “That was an option, but not a good one. Concerning events. Things happening now, nothing you need to worry about—hopefully—but I will not have time to watch you anymore. I will still be collecting and monitoring your data, though. Your job in the Army doesn’t challenge you anymore, doesn’t push you. No, you need something new. Your dead one is a good thing.” She gestured at the coldcoffin.
My low-level unease and confusion about Duanna’s behavior evaporated in a wave of anger. I unconsciously gathered my Vibration power, nearly making my teeth rattle and hissed, “Do not disrespect my soldier.”
“I’m not, she’s dead.” She shrugged.
“She served with honor, and it’s my fault that—” My fire died out as quickly as it had flared to life and I stared at my hands.
“The silly experiment is so arrogant,” Enheduanna said with a sigh. “Even if you had been there, the lizardmen had numbers and mages. You are a talented killer, but dealing with many at once is really not your strength. If you had been there, maybe that wonderful little experiment, Jessica, would have died. Nothing is written. If you had been there, events might have turned out even worse.”
“She still lost her hand,” I mumbled. “It was my duty to be there.”
“Yes yes yes. You made a mistake and acted like a stupid animal. The data from your fight with the bounty hunters was excellent, though!” Her face glowed. With a wave of her hand she dismissed her glowing keyboard and folded her hands in her lap. “The Army path is closed to you now. I did nothing. That was your choice.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know what else to say. “I will probably be court martialed. There isn’t much I can do, I did it.”
“Oh no! How dreadful!” She ran her fingers through her hair and scratched her cheek. “That is not true, though.”
I just sighed and watched her, not saying anything. Enheduanna would never change. She was like a force of nature. It was best to just let her say what she was going to say.
She must have noticed my reaction and tittered, then said, “I was watching you over the last week. After the lizardmen were dead and you sent the magic messenger bird to your superiors, I predicted your silly sadness. After I gathered some data from the nearby lake, I traveled to your superiors last night, woke them up, and informed them that the magic messenger bird was coming.”
“You got there first,” I said, stated as a fact.
“Of course. I informed them that you are a bad soldier and a neglectful officer, but it doesn’t matter. The military doesn’t own you anymore. I informed them when you joined three years ago that you were only obligated to stay until your time as my minion was done.”
“But that’s against the way the—”
“Little regulations say, what? I do not care.” Enheduanna crossed her legs. “I created the Tolstey Army before this country even had a solid government. They will do what I say.”
I swallowed and nodded. In that moment, the bizarre woman radiated power and age. Sometimes with how she acted, I could forget that I was talking to a living legend. I wonder if there is an SOP in the Army to help deal with High Priestesses. I bet there is. With a start, I realized I’d still been holding my power and released it. Attacking Enheduanna would be like throwing a rock at a mountain.
Enheduanna said, “I instructed them to release you, to remove your bond once you return. You will not have a military trial because you should not have been in the military anymore. If you were sentenced to work in a mine, or some other punishment for orb-Bonded, it would be a waste of your talents. I want more research data, too.”
The news shocked me, but then I felt numb. I had not earned this good luck, and I felt conflicted about it. While I didn’t owe Enheduanna anything anymore, she was still pulling the strings. Part of me wanted to be punished, jus
t to spite the demigoddess, but my survivor instinct wouldn’t even allow me to fully form the idea.
Instead I said out loud, “I failed. There isn’t anything left for me. Why save me, just so I can become an adventurer or something? Just keep fighting to give you data?”
The demigoddess grew uncharacteristically serious and level again, raising my hackles. “I will probably not be able to watch you anymore, Nora. At least not like I have been the last few years. You really have grown a lot, and maybe you will even survive on your own.”
“On my own?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I made promises when we first met, and I owe you something.” She pulled an envelope from thin air. “I cannot tell you everything I’ve learned. Some of your past will remain a mystery. What I can tell you, is that I have found your primadre, your first mother. Her location is in this note.”
My heart dropped out from my chest and I couldn’t find my breath. My mother is alive? Old hurts and confusions bubbled up from my past, but my survivor instinct took over again, a blanket of cold rationality settling over my thoughts.
“So again, I have choices, maybe more than last time, but is it really much of a choice? The first time I met you, I could choose to die, be transported to a place I was sure to die in, or become your minion.”
“No, I would not have let you die,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I said as much.”
“I could have killed myself, Duanna.” The High Priestess blinked, like she’d been genuinely surprised, and suppressed a dark chuckle. Then I thought out loud. “So I could probably still volunteer to be punished by the Army, which would be rotting stupid, even if I do deserve it.” Enheduanna began to speak, but I interrupted her. “It’s not like I have skills for any job that doesn’t involve blades, at least not any that I wouldn’t be found at and murdered by bounty hounds.” I tapped the two wooden boxes in my hands to make the point.
“I could become a mercenary, or a guard, or an adventurer, or maybe even go wherever this rotting note you have leads. No matter what I do, my odds of surviving are probably not great, though. I am second-rank ‘Bonded, but so is Jessica, and she lost a hand earlier to lizardmen.”
The demigoddess began to speak again, stopped, then finally said, “This may be true, especially if you do as I predict and rely on yourself too much as you usually do.”
I shook my head, frustrated. “I am still only second-rank orb-Bonded, but I’ve swallowed two spirit stones. Is there any way you can tell Muffin to let me advance? I should be third rank by now.”
“No. Your advancement is completely up to your orb controller AI.”
The answer didn’t surprise me. I switched topics. “If someone who is not orb-Bonded swallows a spirit stone, they die, right?”
“Yes.”
“And if an orb-Bonded person with a Duanna orb or a Dolos modular orb swallows more spirit stones than they need to advance, but stay the same rank as before, they will die too, right?”
“Most likely, yes.” Duanna gave me a look and said, “There is nothing I can do. The choice is up to Muffin. The orb controllers for modular Dolos orbs hold back advancement for their hosts, too. This is one of many reasons why these types of orbs tend to be the most powerful.” She theatrically shrugged. “The world is changing, becoming more serious, and this means I must change too. As I said, I cannot watch over you anymore, but your odds of survival are not great now. What a pity.” She shook the letter at me. “Do you want this or not?”
I was tired of being led around, pushed into decisions. While I had no doubt the contents of the letter Duanna offered me were true, I hesitated. This time, even if I followed the information the powerful woman left me, despite being closure I’d been waiting my whole rotting life for, I was going to do it on my terms. There was no point avoiding the military justice that I deserved just to die because I was not strong enough to endure my future travels.
Jialji and her family had almost killed me, even after all the ways I’d improved as a warrior. My best friend had lost her hand. If I were a normal person, or fighting normal enemies, I would be fine, but more powerful enemies kept finding me. Or I keep finding them, I silently, honestly amended.
No, I was done being led around with a leash. I would not be controlled by Enheduanna, not by Muffin, not even by Dolos himself. I looked Duanna right in the eyes. “Yes, I want the letter, but I also want control. This is my rotting life.”
I opened the wooden boxes in my lap; both held a spirit stone. I removed them, and swallowed both in one jerky movement. Almost immediately, fire seemed to explode in my stomach and my nerves writhed in agony. As the world dimmed and I felt myself falling, I heard Enheduanna sigh.
“Such a pity.”
By a Whisker
The next thing I knew, I was under a sheet. When I pulled it off my head, I saw that I was in a large bed in the middle of a white space. No other color anywhere gave me any way to tell how far it stretched.
Some distance from the foot of the bed, a rodent-like capybara girl stood on a neon green chair. She wore a black hoodie and nothing else. Her beady eyes were fixed on me, completely unblinking.
I warily got out of bed and faced her with my hands on my hips. “Hello, Muffin. It’s been a while.”
“Yes, it has.” Her voice held none of the sarcasm that I remembered. Instead, she sounded flat, cold.
I squared my shoulders. “I want to advance as an orb-Bonded.”
“I know.”
“And?” I gave her a blank expression.
“You tried to kill yourself.”
I nodded. “You can hear my thoughts, so you know that isn’t exactly true. You weren’t letting me rotting advance, though. It’s been three years. I know you don’t like me, but the world just keeps getting more dangerous. There are things that still matter to me, and since I am free from Enheduanna now, I need to figure out who I am.”
“Uh huh.”
I felt a little defensive for a split second, but squashed it. “The Army mattered to me, but it’s gone now. I’ve lost almost everything in my life. Regardless of what I choose to do, I’m not going to do it while my...orb controller won’t let me have the power that I earned.”
Muffin’s lack of expression didn’t change. “I live in your head. You cannot lie to me. You had been swimming in guilt and had an emotional reaction to Enheduanna visiting you. After feeling powerless, you decided to force me to let you advance by placing your life on the line. The two choices I had were to either let you become third rank, or let you die.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” I couldn’t help feeling a little smug.
“You simple creature.” Muffin put one paw over her face, rubbing her eyes. “You have no idea how close you came to actually killing yourself. The reality is that you almost entirely expected to survive your little stunt because you know if you die, I die. What you failed to consider is that I am not alive like you are, I don’t have the same survival instinct, and I cannot fully rebel against my mission.”
My stomach dropped a bit when I heard that. “What do you mean?”
“If you had tried this a few months ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You were not ready to advance back then. Because of your great potential and the powers you chose, it took time for your abilities and your personality to mature—for you to be ready. If I’d let you advance early, it would have ruined your potential and the experiment would have been jeopardized. My core programming would have regarded it as death in action—poor decision making.”
I blinked and felt all my self-satisfaction drain away. “So why are we here then?”
“Your fight a few days ago pushed you so close to advancing, it probably would have been appropriate and would have actually happened within the next week or two anyway. Because you were so close, I was able to justify advancing you early using an uncertainty parameter at my disposal.”
I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I understood I had almost killed my
self. This wasn’t the first time, though. There wasn’t anything to do about it now except be thankful. As long as I was still alive, I’d keep moving forward. “Alright, I get it,” I said. “You know, I have tried talking to you for years through Vistvis, and you have always refused. Is that part of your programming too?”
After a pause, the capybara girl slowly answered, “No.”
“Then this is partly your fault too. Maybe next time you can be a bit nicer and more helpful? Even if you don’t care about your life, your job is to collect research, right? If I’m dead, there is no research. In fact, this all makes letting me die seem pretty rotting stupid.”
“I don’t make the rules, you know that.”
“Yeah but you enforce them. I get that you have rules you need to live by, AI, whatever you are. But if I can get along with Vistvis, I can get along with you too. Not working with me or refusing to tell me anything until I’ve almost died is really rotting stupid.”
She crossed her arms and her nose twitched. “Are you finished?”
“No. Maybe. Are you going to let me advance now?”
Muffin looked up and sighed. She muttered, “Yes.”
“Good! Now we are getting somewhere!” The grief and anger at myself I’d felt while awake was still there, but muted. This strange dreamland made the real world fuzzy, and I was also focused. I’d spent years deciding how to spend my points on my next orb-Bonded rank. Because of the Duanna orb I’d swallowed, I had freedom to choose from a huge list of powers and abilities. I didn’t understand the High Priestess’ explanation about “super power hero” games from her past, but after all this time, I did know my orb was different from even “modular” Dolos orbs.
I’d actually met a couple orb-Bonded people with modular orbs, and they’d told me their orbs functioned a lot like mine. Of course, this was back before Dolos’ announcement of the ‘Bonded bounty.
With a shake of my head, I focused on the matter at hand again. “Up until a few weeks ago, I knew exactly what I was going to spend my points on. This changed recently.”
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